Deadly Class- Reagan Youth
by Rick Remender; Illustrator: Wesley Craig & Lee Loughridge
Published 2014
Review by Johana
Held at the Dwight Library.
The premise feels familiar, young teen orphan having a hard time growing up and fitting in at school, but then you mix in the fact that the school Marcus has been recruited to is a school for assassins. Normally the cliques consist of jocks, preps, nerds, and so on but in this high school you attend classes with children of Yakuza members, KBG agents, white nationalists, South American Drug Lords, CIA/FBI agents, and so on. Though the writing’s is fun and fast-paced it’s really the illustrations that shine in this book. This novel takes place in the 80s and the illustrators do an amazing job getting you to feel the underbelly of that timeline from the grittiness and color palette choices. This author uses memories from his own youth such as drug usage, isolation, violence, depression, poverty and just amps it up to an even darker level. I look forward to continuing the series.